In a previous post, I wondered if I’d already put the following in place:
‘create a learner centred environment where participants have the freedom to build and maintain their own on-line presence’
…. then I thought that maybe I should look at the ‘bigger picture’, so I devised a questionnaire for the children to find out more about their thoughts about ‘owning’ an individual blog.
The questionnaire was distributed on Friday. The responses were all anonymous … but I did ask that they put ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ at the top of the page. The reason for the anonymity was to try to ensure that the children felt free to be honest – I asked for the ‘boy/girl’ thing because I just had a ‘gut feeling’ that the girls would have a more positive reaction to the use of the blogs (mainly based on the fact that they have been overheard discussing them more?)
There were 12 questions, and now that I’ve had a chance to look at the results more closely, one or two (or 3 or 4?) things ‘jump out’ immediately.
- All pupils reprted that they had been quite excited/happy, or very excited/happy at the prospect of being given their own blog
- Most pupils reported that they had lost some interest in using their individual blogs since setting them up in September (jumping down one place .. e.g. ‘5’ went to ‘4’, ‘4’ went to ‘3’)
- There was no difference between the ‘boy/girl’ responses (even although I had anticipated this beforehand)
- 3 pupils had indicated that their enthusiasm towards using individual blogs had actually risen ……. the three pupils were boys (this was a surprise!)
- 2 pupils reported that their enthusiasm had dropped from ‘5’ to ‘1’ on the scale – one was a girl, one boy.
- Almost every pupil wrote about their frustration when trying to manage adding codes to their blogs
A lot to digest ……. next post coming up 🙂